Journaling
Why Use Journaling?
The journal feature in Outlook it meant to help you track things like time spent on a task. You may want to do
this for your own record, or because you bill by the hour and you need an accurate representation of time. For
those who do not use the journal for either of those reasons, it might be because you want to have a more
graphical record of your contact with key individuals, or maybe you just want Outlook to keep track of Office
documents that you open so that when you lose your printed copy in a month, you don’t have to search your
computer for the electronic copy; instead, just open Outlook, find your entry, double-click to open the
document in the correct program, and print out a new one. Whatever your use, journaling will save you time
and effort as well as help to keep you organized.
Journal Setup Tips
There are a couple of things that you need to know before you start using the journal:
1. Journaling works through your contact list. In other words you can only track contact for someone if
they are already in your personal contact list. They cannot be just a person on the exchange server.
2. When sending to someone who is on the exchange server and in your contact list, you need to make
sure that you send to the contact and not the exchange server individual.
To make it easier on you, here are my suggestions:
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If you have been sending to someone on the exchange server and now
you want journaling to record your transactions with them, open a
new mail message and start typing their name. When auto finish tries
to fill in their name, hit delete. This will remove the link to the
exchange account from your auto fill memory so that you do not
accidentally use the wrong one.
Create a contact entry for the person. Anyone on the exchange server
can quickly become a contact by opening up the exchange server address book, right-clicking on their
name, and selecting Add to Contacts. You can then add any additional information about your contact
by going to your contact list and opening up their record.
Change the pulling order of sent item to look first at your contacts
and then at the exchange server. This will not cause any problems,
it will just look in your contacts folder and if it does not find a
match, then it checks in the global address book on the exchange
server. To change the order, open the global address book and click
on Options from the Tools menu. You should see a list that includes
Contacts and Global Address List (there might be more if you have
multiple contacts folders or are using shared folders). Select
Contacts and click on the up arrow so that Contacts shows up
above Global Address List (if you have more folders, place them
above Global Address List as well).
Journal Setup
Now that we have taken care of any problems that we might
have run into, we need to tell Outlook what we want it to
record. To do so we need to open the Journal Options; this can
be found by clicking on Options in the Tools menu. Once the
Options dialog box opens, click on the Journal Options… button.
Now you choose what you want Outlook to keep track of by
clicking on the check boxes associated with each element, what
contacts, and if you want Outlook to also keep track of Office
documents that are opened while Outlook is running. One other
option that you have is whether you want double-clicking on an
already created journal entry to open the entry or the item it refers to. I tend to prefer opening the item it refers
to, but you might not like that if you are more interested in the time spent on a task instead of the task itself.
Creating Journal Entries
If you have your journal set to automatically create journal entries by using the Journal Options dialog box then
those things that you specified will take care of themselves so long as you have setup Outlook according to the
tips you were given earlier. But what if you have a random thing that you want recorded as well, or you want to
keep track of a phone call and what was discussed? Journaling can also do that for you. It has many different
types of journal entries that you can choose from when you manually create an entry. These options include:
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Phone Calls
Letters
Faxes
Conversations
Documents
Along with all the options available with the automatic Journaling Entries
To create a manual journal entry, simple click the new button while
in the journal view. The journal form is simple to navigate so that
you can easily add a subject, select a type of entry, specify a
company (if applicable), and also choose a start time and day. One
thing that is really nice is that if you create the entry as you begin a
task, you can use the timer feature to keep track of the duration of
the task instead of specifying the duration yourself. To use the
timer, click on the Start Timer button and then minimize the entry
while you work. Once you are done, restore the entry to view and
click on the Save & Close button and it will save it with the time that
has elapsed. If you ever get distracted during a task by another task,
you can pause the journal entry by clicking on the Pause Timer
button until you start back on the task. In this way, Outlook can help
you better coordinate what you are doing and how much time you spend doing it.